1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to networking and more particularly to a lookup mechanism based on link layer semantics.
2. Description of the Related Art
One challenge in network systems relates to scaling network workload, i.e., to parallelizing network workload. Parallelization via packet load balancing is typically performed outside of the computing resources and is based on information embedded inside the packet. Thus the decision may be stateful (i.e., the prior history of similar packets affects the parallelization decision of which computing node to use for a particular packet), or the decision may be stateless (i.e., the destination of the packet is chosen based on the information in the packet but unaffected by prior packets).
An issue relating to parallelization is that loose coupling of load balancing elements limits the degree of collaboration between computer systems and the parallelizing entity.
There are a plurality of technical issues that are not present in a traditional load balancing system (i.e., a single threaded load balancing system). For example, in a large simultaneous multiprocessing (SMP) system with multiple partitions, it is not sufficient to identify the partition to process a packet, since the processing can be performed by one of many threads within a partition. Also, the intra partition communication overhead between threads is significantly lower than inter partition communication, which is still lower than node to node communication overhead. Also, resource management can be more direct and simpler than with traditional load balancing systems. Also, a SMP system may have more than one networking interface.